


The Adventure of the Unsuper Soldier Serum

by Akabit



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Post-The Reichenbach Fall, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, References to Temporary Character Death, non-consensual science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-11 00:13:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2045592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akabit/pseuds/Akabit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson was trying to train himself out of his instinct to run towards trouble.  One of these days it was going to get him killed.  Today it caused him to run toward giant robot spiders that were trying to destroy central London. </p>
<p>or</p>
<p>Evil scientists mistake John Watson for a super soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Adventure of the Unsuper Soldier Serum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BrighteyedJill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrighteyedJill/gifts).



> Written for Crossingover 2014. I had a ton of fun combining two fandoms I love, but have never written.
> 
> Thank you to Kamara Black for beta reading.

John Watson was trying to train himself out of his instinct to run towards trouble.  One of these days it was going to get him killed.  Today it caused him to run toward giant robot spiders that were trying to destroy central London.  Field medicine did not have procedures for this exact situation, but he figured that the basic principles of battlefield triage were always applicable.

John worked steadily to stabilize the wounded and direct those that could still walk towards appropriate care.  As the battle started to circle back towards his location, he was helping a man with a broken leg hobble towards an ambulance behind the police barriers. The booms in the distance paired with the sound of falling rubble and civilian screams brought back memories that John would prefer to avoid.  But there was work to do.  People to save.  

The next explosion was closer than he liked. John hurried his patient towards the barrier as he heard shouts ordering the emergency personnel to fall back.  A dark haired man darted out to help him.

"Let me take his other arm," offered the man. Together they delivered the patient to an ambulance.

“Thanks for the help,” John said tiredly.

“Dr. Bruce Banner,” offered the stranger.  John thought the name sounded slightly familiar, but couldn’t place it.  Sherlock would know.  Unfortunately, Sherlock had been dead for eleven months and eight days.

“Dr. John Watson," he responded. "Shall we head back out?”

“Yes, but I may have to abandon you suddenly,” Bruce warned. “And if I am wounded, just leave me and move on.” John had no intention of abandoning the other doctor or letting an argument distract them from their surroundings.  He just grunted and assumed the sound would be taken for agreement.

Dr. Banner had a communicator which supplied him with locations of civilians to rescue and locations of heavy fighting to avoid.  The two doctors worked well as a team.  Dr. Banner was experienced and utterly calm in the face of the growing chaos.  John was starting to relax into a rhythm when a robot spider unexpectedly jumped out from the side of a building.  John looked frantically around for a weapon.

“John run,” commanded Bruce.  Then he spoke briskly into the communicator. “I’m going green.”  John was unfamiliar with the code, but there was no way he was going to let his companion sacrifice himself. As the spider rushed towards Bruce, he seemed to grow and his skin took on a green tint. John belatedly remembered where he had heard the name Bruce Banner as the Hulk took the place of the mild mannered doctor.

“Hulk smash,” he announced to the spider and proceeded to attempt to match actions to words. The Hulk tried to crush the spider with his massive fists, but the spider side stepped the blow and bit the Hulk with its pincers.  John wasn’t worried.  Several of the people he had helped rescue had sustained robot spider bites.  They had told him that the venom itched, but didn’t cause any more damage than a normal spider bite.  The effect on the Hulk was slightly more dramatic.  He roared and flung the spider into a wall with a swing of his arms. Then he turned, took a couple of unsteady steps towards John, and started to fall.  The last thing Watson saw was a massive green body collapsing towards him.

\------------

John returned to consciousness with blurred vision and a blinding headache.  When he tried to sit up, he discovered he was bound to a medical bed at his wrists, chest, waist, thighs and ankles with thick metal cuffs. It would be overkill to keep an enraged elephant contained much less a concussed doctor.  Turning his head, he could make out the fuzzy shapes of two additional beds. The closer one held an unconscious Dr. Banner and the further one held a blond man wearing a mostly blue suit. The entire far wall was taken up with a lab table covered in neatly arranged medical supplies, a computer, and a round shield.  Great, he was imprisoned with two superheros and it wasn't even Sherlock's fault.

As he finished his assessment, a professionally dressed woman walked into the room.  She took vitals and a sample of blood from the other two men before turning her attention to John.

"Good morning," she said briskly. "I see you are the first of my patients to wake up." Her manner was detached but not unkind and her voice had a faint German accent.

"Good morning," John responded politely.  She seemed unlikely to immediately torture or kill him so he might get some information by keeping things civil. "What are you doing?"

"I'm monitoring how the serum is reasserting itself as the neutralizer wears off," she answered.

John was confused. "What serum?"

The woman clicked her tongue and didn’t answer the question.  Instead, she began the same examination she had completed on the other two men.  “I would have expected the serum to have healed the concussion by now,” she remarked when she finished her work.

“I don’t know anything about a serum,” repeated John.  

The woman completely ignored his statement and walked towards the door.  “I will be back shortly with food. Do you have any dietary restrictions?”

“You care about what I want to eat?” John wondered if she knew how many people had been killed by robot spiders during the battle that led to their capture.  

“We need to study you so that your enhancement can be replicated, but there is no reason to be cruel about it.” John supposed he should be grateful that his captors were not sadists.

“What is your name?” John asked.  He doubted he would be able to persuade the woman to let them go, but trying to establish empathy with ones captors never went amiss.

“Dr. Emma Sauer,” she replied bluntly and left.

That interaction set the pattern for the next several days.  The prisoners were left alone except for when Dr. Sauer performed medical examinations or delivered bland but filling shakes that they had to drink through straws without the use of their hands.  There was a special cup holder on the side of the bed that seemed to have been designed especially for this purpose.

Being held by evil scientists was surprisingly boring. During the second examination, John kept up a constant stream of questions which went completely unanswered and during the third he complained. About an hour later one of the computer monitors in the far wall started playing BBC news.

Just after the fifth examination, John was distracted from a report of the damage to central London by Captain America struggling against his bonds. His movements were systematic and efficient instead of panicked. After several minutes, he realized he was stuck.

"Hello," said John. "I'm John Watson." Captain America turned towards him and John was shocked to see how young he was.

"Steve Rogers." Maybe it was the result of the serum, but he looked no older than his mid twenties.  Apparently the cowl adds ten years. “Do you know what is happening?”

“Not really,” John replied. "You're here so our captors can study some serum and I'm here due to a case of mistaken identity.”  John indicated the computer monitor with his chin.  “According to the news coverage, a group called HYDRA is claiming responsibility for the attack on London.”

Rogers looked grim. “Has our capture been reported?”

“No, but there is some speculation as to why Tony Stark has been handling Avengers press alone.” Steve nodded and lapsed into silence. John wished he could come up a plan for escape, but he could barely move more than his fingers. John was grimly realistic about his situation.  The scientists would soon realize that he had no value to their research and it was likely that no one had even realized he was missing.  His only hope lay with teaming up with the Avengers for either escape or rescue.

At least, Rogers was a pleasant companion. He was happy to talk about any topic that was completely irrelevant to their predicament. When John tried to question him about HYDRA, Steve reminded him that ‘loose lips sink ships’.  However, Steve was more than willing to tell stories of growing up in Brooklyn and traveling around Europe with the USO. As he spoke, he idly tapped his fingers against his leg.  It took John longer than it should have to realize he was tapping out Morse code.

"R u understand," tapped Steve. Great now he got to interpret morse code text speak from a man that had only been in this century for about 6 months.

"Slowly," answered John. Steve gave no outward appearance of having seen.  He started telling a boring story about an art school project while his fingers continued the real conversation.

"Powers or skills?," asked Steve. He had to repeat the question twice before John understood.

"Army dr. Basic training." John knew he was a better than average shot, but that hardly seemed relevant when they had no access to weapons.  Dr. Sauer appeared to be unarmed.

"Where?" John assumed Steve was asking where they were.

"Britain," BBC news was playing without commercials, but John wouldn't put it past unethical scientists to also be media pirates. He tried to hide a shrug as a stretch to indicate his uncertainty.

“Patterns?” asked Steve.  The time before the news turned on was a bit uncertain, but since he had been able to keep time exactly by the clock on the red bar near the bottom of the screen. In some ways, being able to track the hours was as useful as the distraction of the news stories.  Watching the minutes tick by was grounding and it was reassuring to know they had only been gone for just over 31 hours.

“Dr. every four hours,” replied John. “Food after.”

“Other intel?” Steve prompted.  

“Bruce not wake. Me concussion,” He did another subtle shrug to indicate he had nothing else to share.  Steve wrapped up the art school story and turned his attention to the news program.  John hoped he was hatching an escape plan. He started planning out the blog entries he could write when they got out.  Assuming he wasn’t told to keep everything quiet.

About ten minutes later, Dr. Sauer entering the room to draw yet another blood sample.  This time the needle woke Dr. Banner.  He breathed deeply through the examination and requested a vegan meal.

While they were waiting for their food, Steve starting telling a mildly interesting tale about military rations.  John responded with tales of the many inedible items Sherlock had decided to store in their fridge. This naturally led to tales of Sherlocks other experiments and solving mysteries. It was the first time he had spoken about Sherlock to someone who hadn’t known him since his death.

"It sounds like life with your roommate is never boring," commented Steve. John closed his eyes briefly in grief and shook his head.

"He died," John explained shortly.  Steve and Bruce asked no questions which oddly made him able to continue. "He fell."

"So did Bucky." John saw sympathy and complete understanding on Steve's face.  

"It has been almost a year," added John. Steve nodded.

"For me, it had been seventy years or about six months depending in how you look at it." As he finished speaking, Steve frowned slightly and cocked his head to the side as if listening to something.  John didn’t hear anything unusual, he was more than willing to believe he had the worst hearing in the room.

A couple minutes later, he heard several quiet thumps in the hallway and then the door opened to reveal a beautiful woman dressed as a scientist.  She didn't say anything but John guessed she was probably there to rescue them because she immediately began picking the locks on Steve's cuffs.  As she finished freeing Steve, a man with a large bow ducked into the room and stood just out of view of the hallway with an arrow nocked.  

“Need help?” she asked as she opened the last of Rogers cuffs. In response, he sat and sprang to his feet in one easy motion.  He immediately walked across the room to retrieve his shield from the lab table.  As he settled it on his arm, Steve straightened his shoulders and stood tall ready for battle.

“Bruce and John may need some assistance,” Steve said.

The woman made quick work of Bruce’s cuffs and then paused by John’s bed. "Is Captain Watson an ally?" she enquired in a neutral tone.  John wondered how she knew his name.

"Ally," Bruce said quietly and Steve nodded in agreement.  As the woman freed John, Bruce did some yoga stretches to loosen muscles too long confined to one position.

John almost fell as he stood for the first time in two days. He refused Steve’s offered arm and braced himself against the medical bed from which he had just been released. As he rolled his neck to relieve some soreness, he sternly reminded himself that his leg injury was psychosomatic. When he finished, the woman handed him a Browning pistol.  

"Thank you," said John. It was clear the woman had been in contact with someone who knew him fairly well.

The woman meet his gaze. "I don’t expect resistance, but it is fully loaded. Shoot to kill if necessary."

“Yes, Ma’am,” answered John. He was fairly certain she was the Black Widow, but her name had never been made public.

“Hawkeye and I have cleared a path out of the building,” the Black Widow instructed. “The plan is to walk out without attracting any unwanted attention.”

The three former captives nodded agreement and she led them out into the hallway.  Their escape was a bit anticlimactic. They walked quickly down a long hallway before exiting out a set of double doors.  They passed many labs but no people.  John sneaked a quick look into one of the rooms and saw two men in lab coats unconscious on the floor.

When they left the building, they found themselves in an industrial area.  It was oddly deserted for 3 PM on a Tuesday. Most of the buildings were in reasonable repair and had signs to indicate the occupying business.  There were a smattering of cars in the parking lots, but not a single person. The woman led them a couple blocks to a unmarked passenger van.

"Clear," the woman said into a small communicator she pulled out of the pocket of her labcoat.

As Hawkeye them drove away, they passed a dozen black SUVs that John assumed were heading towards the labs to retrieve data and make arrests.

“You have friends in high places, Captain Watson” the Black Widow commented. “The British secret service contacted SHIELD to report your capture before we were even certain Bruce and Cap were missing.” John really should not be surprised to hear that Mycroft was still spying on him.

“My roommate’s brother holds a minor position in the British government,” John explained.

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “We were put in contact with an agent who was able to give us detailed information about HYDRA’s activities in Britain.”

“That is how you found us?” asked John.

“That narrowed it down to several possibilities,” the Black Widow acknowledged.

“We knew where to find you because a homeless man stopped me on the street and shoved an envelope into my hand,” Hawkeye said. “It contained a brief note telling us which facility to hit and when to hit it.”

John felt his heart skip a beat as soon as Hawkeye said the word homeless.  He couldn’t hold back a grin. Perhaps he wouldn’t stop running in to danger anytime soon. There was only one person he knew that used that method of communication.  And he was still alive. John didn’t know how he had faked his death or why he hadn’t included John in his plans. These were secondary considerations.  Sherlock had found John and now John would stop at nothing to find him.


End file.
